Challenge

ASDA and George required reactive, actionable consumer insights to enhance their social content and product prioritisation work. iCrossing was tasked with providing detailed consumer demand and behaviour insights to support content creation.

Strategy

We used our Search & Social Listening product to get under the skin of ASDA and George customers, finding out what they need, engage with and consider on-trend…

Search listening insights shone a light on consumer behaviour and demand, telling us both what our audiences were searching for and when.

Social trend insights showed us how audiences were discussing relevant information, allowing us to see social nuances and trending conversations that may not yet have been picked up in search analysis. This helped inform social content focuses, as well as feeding into future keyword research and content planning by identifying more ‘reactive’ topics.

We leveraged the monthly Social Health Check reports to monitor the impact of the enhanced relevancy of the social content. We continued to evolve our deliverables and tap into key business focuses and plans.

Insights included but were not limited to:

• Channel performance benchmarked against competitors: how each social channel of ASDA, George and competitors compared regarding engagement, following and post frequency and the month-on-month growth.
• Social content performance per channel: we identified which pieces of content drove the most and least engagement across Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, providing likely explanations for the level of performance.
• Paid social review: an assessment of the active ads created by George/ASDA and competitors i.e. who is most active and doing well in this space.
• Sentiment analysis: we leveraged social listening to understand how both brands were being perceived compared to key competitors, analysing the sentiment of language used in brand mentions and identifying topics driving both positive and negative sentiment.
• Campaign monitoring: we leveraged social listening to monitor mentions of brand campaigns such as “Get Your Cook On” to understand how campaigns were being received, how to optimise future campaign messaging, and ultimately enhance audience responses and perceptions to campaigns.
• Brand association comparison: we leveraged social listening to segment all mentions of ASDA, George and competitors by certain associations such as affordability and sustainability allowing us to see which attributes each brand was most associated with plus those which they were failing to drive association. This highlighted areas that needed more focus on in terms of content and campaign messaging to consumers.

Combined, this holistic approach informed us of popular topics, key engagement triggers and any niche, unmet audience needs to increase the relevancy and reactivity of ASDA and George’s social and editorial content.

We leveraged the bi-weekly report to provide reactive and actionable consumer insights to enhance social content ideation and product prioritisation in the context of consumer demands and behaviours across search and social channels, in order to directly inform content plans.

Insights included but were not limited to:

• Trending topics: we took a deep dive into conversation-driving topics identified to reveal further social nuances – how are people discussing a certain topic? What language are they using? Are there any unique themes and trends emerging? Perhaps a modern twist on a traditional recipe is gaining traction online? These insights increased the relevance and reactivity of consumer demands and engagement triggers showcased in the report and gave ASDA/George the opportunity to harness a trend, and even drive it with truly responsive content.
• Emerging searches: we looked at searches gaining momentum to identify any stand-out product trends but primarily to identify queries that shed light on unmet needs (i.e. what audiences were seeking from content) to inform editorial content for asdagoodliving.co.uk and the surrounding social amplification to increase reach and awareness of new site content. Having such a granular look at the trending conversation and the intent behind searches allowed us to truly get under the skin of what audiences desired and would engage with.

This research was rounded up into neat, actionable reports filled with recommendations – from organic and paid social platform best practice and customer sentiment, to key content themes and messages to convey. These fed directly into ASDA and George’s content plans, and we reported on the great results we saw off the back of our recommendations.

Results

Our unique and industry leading approach to research and evaluation for enhanced and consumer-centric impact is the first of its kind - a digital marketing agency and content production and publishing house working together. Our work is rooted in a simple methodology that ensures every piece of social content is informed by real consumer insights, driving real business impact and performance growth.

The lead ASDA client described the Social Health Check calls as 'the highlight of her month’. They have added incredible value to both brands’ social offering and have impressed internal stake holders, pushing their social media implementations further and ensuring that they continue to keep their finger on the pulse in terms of both consumer demand but social best practices and advancements.

• 750% increase in engagement on Twitter between September and November as a result of an organic social content recommendation.
• George’s Pinterest following grew by 29% and Instagram 16%
• ASDA’s Instagram following grew by 11% and Pinterest 8%